My current Auxiliary Internet Device set-up

[kaberett]

Backstory: I use my AIDe (see what I did there) for a bunch of health-management crap, and also for a bunch of Pokémon Go (for the last year). I am also, as I believe is well-established, Rather Tough On Hardware, and was Impressed yesterday with some of it, so here is another round-up of what all I am doing and routinely using at the moment.

Hardware
I'm using a Zendure A5 battery pack. 16750 mAh, two USB ports, outputting maximum 2.1A in total, adjusting according to how many things you've got plugged in and how much power they want. Also perfectly happy to be rigged up to charge through, i.e. have something plugged into it while it's plugged into a wall. It's ruggedised, and I haven't managed to break it yet at all -- it's got some scuff marks, but everything still Works and it will still do me two full days of pretty heavy usage on a single charge. I am duly impressed, given the number of battery packs I went through previously where I fairly rapidly managed to unsettle the USB ports enough that first you had to start holding the USB plug at a really specific angle to keep contact, and then the max output started falling off, and then it all just entirely gave up unless you wobbled it exactly right in a fashion that's completely incompatible with, you know, wheelchairing anywhere while charging your device.

I'm using Anker microUSB cables, and these are actually what prompted me to make the post. I'd been going through a USB cable once a week to once a fortnight or so, basically by dropping my AIDe while chairing places with it on my lap/being forgetful and putting unfortunate torque through/etc. I've had these for four to six weeks or so now, and so far the only damage I've managed to do them has been minor (slightly bending the microUSB plug such that the retracting pins wouldn't actually lock into place and the cable would slip out easily, with no impact on rate of charging) and readily reparable (bending the pin back into place with a pair of pliers, again with no noticeable degradation of performance). I am a fan. (me_and is also a fan -- he's got a slightly elderly battery pack that mostly works, but its input socket is a bit temperamental. These cables Just Work with it. He is enormously relieved.)

Software

Let's play the Subdivide Shit Into Broad Categories game!

Task management

• Splitwise: plausible multi-human multi-group whose-turn-is-it-to-buy-dinner management with minimal requirement to actually apply executive function.
  
• Regularly: repeating tasks you can categorise by tagging (so for example my subdivisions are Home, Wheelchair, Dreamwidth, Healthwork), that handle urgency reasonably intelligently -- if you're supposed to do something once a week or so and you haven't done it for a fortnight, it'll get marked as significantly more urgent (and closer to the top of the list) than something you're supposed to do once every six months that you're two weeks overdue on. This is Very Good for prompting me to do various house cleaning, pump up my wheelchair tyres once every six weeks, etc.
  
• Wunderlist: not actually something I want for repeating tasks, but useful for a shared household shopping list/long-term todo, lists of things to bring up the next time I go to the GP, lists of things I want to buy eventually as a treat, etc.

(My ideal here is honestly an exciting mash-up of Wunderlist and Regularly, such that I can have Regularly-style task management on a shared list such that we can coordinate more usefully about who does the housework -- "oh, I can see that the loo needs bleaching, I actually have the executive function for that right now, I'll tick it off so housemate knows it's dealt with" -- but as far as I can tell that isn't something that currently exists, and Regularly isn't in active development.)

Healthwork

• Clue: as I've gone on about before, a gender-neutral science-based (with references!) period tracker that doesn't annoy me. It's got a lot of flexibility, it's very well put together, and it's super easy to join their user test team and occasionally get sent a branded tote bag. Your data gets used to help do large-scale medical research on menstruation, and I think that's pretty excellent, actually.
  
• Depression Test by MoodTools: this is a PHQ-9 questionnaire in a reassuring shade of blue that keeps your history (so you can track over time easily without keeping additional records), will optionally prompt you to take one every two weeks, and gently prompts you with resources and advice for What You Might Like To Consider Doing.
  
• Dosecast: it has some Interesting Quirks (like being really bad at respecting "don't sound alarms between 10pm and 8am" if the last time you hit "yes I took this drug" was at or after 8pm so the next dose, if you're on a four-hour schedule like me, would be after midnight i.e. a new day), but it's the medication reminder app that is currently annoying me least with greatest effect. You get to set up a variety of different medications, to be taken at different intervals, and you get to configure it to keep sounding a nag alarm at intervals of your choosing until you go "FUCKING FINE YES I DID IT ARE YOU HAPPY NOW" and click "Take Drug" and then have it start the next four-hour countdown timer (if that's how you've got your countdowns configured), so, Annoying but mostly in a helpful way.
  
• Chrono List is an interval timer. I use it for physio ("AIDe, do me six rounds of: sound a timer after 45 seconds; sound a timer after 15 seconds; repeat"); I'm pretty sure azurelunatic uses it for Pomodoro (20/10s); generally highly configurable.

Misc. Ambience

• f.lux: colour-temperature adjustment; requires that your device be rooted (because it does proper adjustment and dimming, rather than doing an increasingly-red overlay; for this reason I massively prefer it to Twilight).
  
• Magisk: roots my Android device in such a way that I can run f.lux and play Pokemon Go.
  
• Calcy IV (me_and found this one): ridiculous Pokemon-rating add-on for Optimum Min-Maxing.
  
• The Metronome by Soundbrenner: least annoying metronome I've found for the purposes of music practice etc. ("I should buy a digital metronome, really," I grumbled to A. "... Alex," he said, "... there's an app for that.")
  
• Keepass2Android: password manager, which links up with my desktop instantiation of same via the magic of Dropbox (do not trust Dropbox with your data, children, it's a bad idea, I'm just lazy).
  
  Aaaaany questions? I imagine not, but I am very happy to natter about this stuff!